Employers have been told to clamp down on ‘laddish’ sports banter in the workplace over fears it alienates women.
The head of Britain’s Chartered Management Institute (CMI), Ann Francke, made the claims on Monday on BBC radio.
Francke said that whilst she was not calling for a complete ban on sports-related discussions in the office or in working areas, she believes more thought must be given to female members of staff who can feel excluded as a result.
“It’s very easy for it to escalate from VAR talk and chat to slapping each other on the back and talking about their conquests at the weekend,” chief executive Francke said.
“A lot of women, in particular, feel left out,” she added. “They don’t follow those sports and they don’t like either being forced to talk about them or not being included.”
Francke further suggested that managers should make it their responsibility to ensure such talk does not create incidents were team members do not feel comfortable or included.
The CMI is a professional consultancy service which offers management training courses to its members.
It currently has more than 132,000 managers among its membership, over 7000 of whom are chartered.
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Female sports broadcaster Jacqui Oatley was appearing as a guest on the same show, but blasted the “terrible idea”.
“If you ban football chat or banter of any description, then all you’re going to do it alienate the people who actually want to communicate with each other,” Oatley said.
“It would be so, so negative to tell people not to talk about sport because girls don’t like it or women don’t like it, that’s far more divisive.”
The debate caused significant reaction on social media.
“This is ridiculous – as a female football fan, this kind of presumption that women either don’t like football or would want others to stop talking about something we’re not interested in is ridiculous,” commented @LaurenD1905.
“Tackle (pardon the pun) the gender pay gap or workplace harassment instead.”
Recruiter Peter Ferguson could see the value in the conversation however, and suggested an alternative method of working with the issue.
“I have seen managers and staff build a more direct bond over a shared love of sport which has excluded those who don’t share that interest,” Ferguson said.
“The answer is not to ban the conversation, it is to ensure managers and staff are trained to understand that those shared interests should not get in the way of management decisions or working collaboratively.”
